If that isn't defeat, I don't know what is.
It is correct a demobilized Russia had difficulty taking Karelia in 1940. However in 1945 the USSR could push the Wehrmacht and its allies back to Berlin, I don't know any historian who thinks taking Finland would have been a problem once mobilized.
It just sounds like the Soviets didn't want Finland that badly.
Big difference.
They could do it anytime. They just chose not to.
You truly believe this? Remarkable.
And the Soviets were nowhere near running out of resources or people at the end of the Winter War, as shown by their ability to defeat a much more powerful enemy a few years later.
It was the pure will of the Soviets which led them to their, and only their victory.
I don't even know what to say. It must have been a lack of will, surely. /s
(edit) Look, I know what you're trying to say. But if we put it that way, we're implying that they could've surpassed the will of the Finns in some way, if they wanted to. And I firmly believe that to not have been the case.
They didn't do it, and you know why? Because they tried, and couldn't. That's what happened.
I'm sure you mean well, but even though they killed more than 5.5 million Nazis, they couldn't kill more than 70k Finns. And that's history, not some alternative possibility.
Making it seem as if Finland is but a vassal for the U.S. for this move is disingenuous at best. After Georgia, Crimea, and now the rest of Ukraine, anyone would make such a decision. Out of their own will. In order to survive.
What does this even mean?